Customer Intent Does Not Live on One Platform

For a while, I thought about ZeroToUser mostly through the lens of X.

That made sense at first.

X is where many founders, indie hackers, SaaS builders, AI tool makers, and developers talk in public. People share what they are building, complain about tools, ask for recommendations, discuss workflows, compare products, and talk openly about problems they are trying to solve.

If you are building a product for founders or developers, X can be a useful source of market signals.

You can find pain points.

You can find buying intent.

You can find people asking for alternatives.

You can find people complaining about existing tools.

You can find early adopters who are actively looking for better workflows.

So it was natural to think of ZeroToUser as a product that helps users discover relevant conversations on X.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this framing is too narrow.

ZeroToUser should not be built around one platform.

It should be built around customer intent.

And customer intent does not live on one platform.

The Platform Is Not the Problem

A common mistake when building growth tools is to start with the platform.

Find leads on X.

Find leads on Reddit.

Find leads on LinkedIn.

Find leads on Facebook.

Find leads from Google.

That framing is useful, but it is incomplete.

Because the deeper question is not:

which platform should we search?

The deeper question is:

where do potential customers naturally express their problems?

That answer depends on the market.

Developers may talk on X, Reddit, GitHub, Discord, Hacker News, and Stack Overflow.

SaaS founders may talk on X, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers, Reddit, Product Hunt, and niche founder communities.

Ecommerce sellers may talk in Facebook groups, TikTok comments, Instagram, Shopify communities, Reddit, and private communities.

Foreign trade businesses may care more about Facebook, LinkedIn, Google search, directories, industry forums, trade communities, and buyer groups.

Local service businesses may care about Google reviews, Facebook groups, local forums, community pages, and search results.

Creators may express demand through YouTube comments, TikTok comments, X, Substack, Discord, and niche communities.

The same type of customer intent can show up in completely different places depending on the audience.

That means the product should not overfit to one platform.

The product should understand the signal.

What Customer Intent Actually Looks Like

Customer intent is not always obvious.

Sometimes it looks like a direct request:

"Does anyone know a tool that can help with this?"

Sometimes it looks like frustration:

"I'm tired of doing this manually."

Sometimes it looks like comparison:

"Is there a better alternative to this product?"

Sometimes it looks like workflow pain:

"I spend too much time switching between these tools."

Sometimes it looks like a failed workaround:

"I tried using spreadsheets for this, but it's becoming a mess."

Sometimes it looks like urgency:

"I need to solve this before next week."

Sometimes it looks like budget:

"We're willing to pay if this actually works."

Sometimes it looks like confusion:

"I don't even know what category of tool I should search for."

These signals are valuable because they appear before a customer fills out a demo form.

They appear before a customer searches your exact product name.

They appear before they know which solution they want.

That is where early opportunity lives.

The best time to understand a customer is often before they become a customer.

The Real Job Is Not "Lead Scraping"

This distinction matters a lot.

ZeroToUser should not become a tool that simply scrapes platforms and turns every public post into a sales target.

That is a bad product direction.

It creates spam.

It encourages lazy outreach.

It reduces real people into rows in a database.

And it makes the product dependent on platform loopholes instead of real value.

The better direction is different.

ZeroToUser should help users understand public market conversations.

It should help them see where problems are being discussed.

It should help them identify patterns.

It should help them learn the words customers use.

It should help them discover pain points before building the wrong thing.

It should help them find places where thoughtful participation is useful.

The goal is not to automate bad outreach.

The goal is to help builders, founders, and teams understand demand more clearly.

There is a big difference between:

"Here are people you can spam."

And:

"Here are real conversations that reveal a market need."

The second one is much more valuable.

It is also much more aligned with how good products are built.

Different Markets Need Different Maps

This is where the product becomes more interesting.

If ZeroToUser only focuses on X, it will mostly see the world of founders, developers, AI builders, and startup people.

That is useful, but it is not the whole market.

A SaaS founder looking for early users may need X, Reddit, LinkedIn, and founder communities.

An ecommerce brand may need TikTok, Instagram, Facebook groups, product reviews, and Shopify-related communities.

A foreign trade company may need LinkedIn, Facebook, Google search, directories, and industry forums.

A local service business may need Google reviews, local Facebook groups, Reddit city communities, and search visibility.

A B2B agency may need LinkedIn posts, job posts, company updates, public discussions, and review sites.

A consumer app may need TikTok comments, Reddit threads, app reviews, and creator communities.

Each market has its own map.

The mistake is assuming one platform is the map.

The better product is one that helps users build the right map for their market.

That is the direction I want ZeroToUser to move toward.

Not "search one platform."

But:

discover where your customers are already talking, then understand what they are saying.

The Connection to SpotAQ

This idea also connects to SpotAQ.

SpotAQ started from a different problem:

How do AI systems understand, describe, compare, and recommend your brand?

At first, it is easy to think of AI visibility as something mainly for SaaS companies.

SaaS teams care about whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity mention them when users ask for tools.

That is true.

But AI visibility is not only a SaaS problem.

Ecommerce brands will care whether AI assistants recommend their products.

Exporters and foreign trade companies will care whether AI tools can find and describe them when buyers search for suppliers.

Agencies will care whether AI systems understand their positioning.

Local businesses will care whether AI answers mention them as relevant options.

Productized service companies will care whether AI tools categorize them correctly.

In the same way that customer intent is not limited to X, AI visibility is not limited to SaaS.

Both products are really about discovery.

ZeroToUser is about discovering customer intent.

SpotAQ is about being discoverable by AI systems.

One helps you find the market.

The other helps the market find you.

That connection is becoming clearer to me.

Building Around Signals, Not Channels

The more I think about it, the more I believe the right mental model is:

do not build around channels.

Build around signals.

A channel is just where the signal appears.

X is a channel.

Reddit is a channel.

Facebook is a channel.

LinkedIn is a channel.

TikTok is a channel.

Google is a channel.

Directories are channels.

Review sites are channels.

AI answers are becoming a channel too.

But the signal is the important part.

A customer expressing frustration is a signal.

A buyer comparing tools is a signal.

A founder asking for alternatives is a signal.

A seller complaining about manual work is a signal.

A brand being misrepresented by AI is a signal.

A product not appearing in AI recommendations is a signal.

A recurring question in a community is a signal.

A competitor comparison ranking in search is a signal.

ZeroToUser should help users find and understand these signals.

SpotAQ should help users understand how their brand appears inside the new discovery layer created by AI.

That is more durable than building around any single platform.

The Product Should Help Users Think Better

Another important lesson:

the product should not just return more data.

More data is easy to create.

More noise is also easy to create.

The hard part is helping users think better.

If someone searches for a keyword and gets 1,000 posts, that is not automatically useful.

They still need to know:

• Which posts actually matter?
• Which conversations show real intent?
• Which problems appear repeatedly?
• Which language do customers use?
• Which communities are worth joining?
• Which pain points are urgent?
• Which signals are noise?
• Which opportunities match what they can actually build or sell?

The value is not only in retrieval.

The value is in interpretation.

A good customer-intent product should not just say:

"Here are mentions."

It should help answer:

• What are people struggling with?
• Who has this problem?
• Where are they talking about it?
• How urgent is it?
• What solutions are they already using?
• What alternatives are they asking for?
• What content or product should we create next?

That is the product I would want to use.

Not a feed of random mentions.

A system that helps me understand the market before I waste months building in the wrong direction.

Why This Matters for Small Builders

Small builders do not have unlimited time.

They cannot afford to build the wrong thing for six months.

They cannot afford to spend thousands on ads before knowing whether people actually care.

They cannot afford to wait for perfect market research.

They need fast, practical ways to understand demand.

That is why public conversations are so valuable.

People are already telling the internet what they want.

They complain.

They ask.

They compare.

They recommend.

They reject.

They explain their workflows.

They describe what is broken.

The problem is that these conversations are scattered.

They are spread across platforms, communities, comments, reviews, and search results.

A founder can manually search for them.

But manual searching does not scale well.

And most people do not know where to look.

That is the opportunity.

ZeroToUser can become a way for small builders to discover real market signals earlier.

Not to replace talking to customers.

But to make it easier to find the right conversations and the right people to learn from.

The Wrong Version and the Better Version

There is a wrong version of this product.

The wrong version is:

"Enter a keyword and spam everyone who mentioned it."

That is not what I want to build.

The better version is:

"Enter a market, product idea, competitor, or customer pain point. We will help you find public conversations that reveal demand, summarize the patterns, show where the market is talking, and help you decide what to build, write, or research next."

That is more useful.

It is also more defensible.

Because the product is not just a data extractor.

It becomes a market understanding layer.

For example:

If someone is building an AI visibility tool, ZeroToUser could help them find conversations where founders complain that AI recommends competitors instead of them.

If someone is building an ecommerce analytics tool, it could help them find sellers complaining about scattered dashboards, ad performance, or inventory issues.

If someone is building for foreign trade companies, it could help them discover buyer questions, supplier discovery problems, trust issues, and market entry concerns.

If someone is building a local service tool, it could help them find repeated complaints in reviews and community groups.

The output should not be "go sell to this person immediately."

The output should be:

"Here is what the market is trying to tell you."

Customer Intent Is Becoming More Fragmented

One reason this matters now is that customer intent is becoming more fragmented.

In the old search-first world, a lot of intent showed up in Google.

People searched.

They clicked.

They compared.

They chose.

That still happens.

But now discovery is spreading.

People ask AI assistants.

They ask communities.

They watch TikTok.

They read Reddit.

They search YouTube.

They browse directories.

They compare products inside AI answers.

They ask Facebook groups.

They trust niche creators.

They read reviews.

They follow founder updates.

Intent still exists, but it is more distributed.

This creates a problem for small companies.

If you only watch one platform, you only see one slice of demand.

If you only optimize for one discovery path, you miss the others.

The future of growth may require a broader map.

Not just SEO.

Not just social.

Not just ads.

Not just AI visibility.

But a system that understands how customers discover, compare, ask, and decide across many surfaces.

That is where ZeroToUser and SpotAQ can eventually connect.

What I Want ZeroToUser to Become

I do not want ZeroToUser to be a narrow lead scraping tool.

I want it to become a customer-intent signal engine.

A tool that helps users answer:

• Where are my potential customers talking?
• What problems are they describing?
• Which platforms matter for my market?
• Which keywords reveal real pain?
• Which competitors are being mentioned?
• Which alternatives are people asking for?
• Which posts show high intent?
• Which patterns are repeated across channels?
• What should I build, write, or test next?

That is the direction.

It may start simple.

It may begin with a small number of sources.

It may begin with manual workflows.

It may begin with keyword-based discovery.

But the deeper idea is broader.

Customer intent is scattered.

ZeroToUser should help make it visible.

The Lesson

The lesson I am taking from this is simple:

do not fall in love with the platform.

Fall in love with the signal.

Platforms change.

APIs change.

Accounts get restricted.

Communities shift.

Algorithms move.

But the underlying need remains:

builders need to understand customers earlier.

Brands need to understand how they are discovered.

Small companies need better ways to see demand before they waste time building the wrong thing.

That is the opportunity.

X can be one source.

Reddit can be one source.

Facebook can be one source.

LinkedIn can be one source.

TikTok, reviews, directories, Google, and AI answers can all be part of the map.

But none of them should be the whole product.

The product should be built around the customer.

Not the platform.

Because customer intent does not live on one platform.